Adventures of a wife, mom, personal trainer, and certified yoga teacher, with a passion for living a healthy, natural, balanced, and transparent life without borders. All things life, love, food, fitness, marriage, parenthood, and lots of YOGA!<3

Diary of a Tea Lover: The benefits behind the obsession

Friends! It’s been wayyyyy too long! I am telling you, we are nearing the end with Baby D and there is so much to finish up that these days just fly by in a blur! If I remember right, I posted to all my Instagram followers that I would be doing a blog about the benefits of tea…yeah that was about 12 days ago. See what I mean? Lord have mercy. Well, here it is. I haven’t forgotten about you!

We are all purists here right? Good, that’s what I thought. What that means is, that even though there are many brews out there, purists only count the real thing as being among this list: green, black, white, oolong, and pu-erh.

Being pregnant, I’ve craved tea, and decided to do this post because I found out that a lot of other pregnant moms do too, but they also want to watch caffeine intake. I started brewing LARGE amounts in a huge kettle at home to settle this issue. You can buy tea packets decaffeinated. As you see in the picture above, I get creative with it. I like to mix it up and one of my favorite kinds of teas are the ones that have numerous flavors in them. I like to mix regular tea (I think it’s orange pekoe), some peach tea, and green tea. Add a few lemons to your pitcher, some stevia and ice to your glass if you like it to be sweet, and holy smokes, you could sit there with a jug of it and just drink in the goodness. It’s so refreshing…or maybe that’s just me who does that. 🙂 I loved the freedom to still get my tea fix without taking in too much caffeine, and I like that I can brew it as strong as I want. I like a bold tea flavor. Anyway, without further ado, listed below is this list of each specific tea and its benefits. Tea originated in a shrub called Camellia Sinensis, native to China and India. It contains high levels of antioxidants and flavonoids which, as we know, are key in curbing those free radicals that cause cancer, heart disease, and clogged arteries.

Green Tea

Green Tea has a very high concentration of EGCG (Epigallocatechin gallate)…whoa! What’s that you ask? Basically, to spare you all the chemistry mumbo-jumbo, it’s a powerful antioxidant. Because of these high levels, green tea will actually interrupt the growth of bladder, breast, lung, stomach, pancreatic and colorectal cancers. If that’s not reason enough to drink this amazing tea, green tea also helps prevent the clogging of arteries, helps burn fat (I hear all the woman starting their cars and running to target for a box), counteract oxidative stress on the brain, can help with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, reduces your risk of stroke, and helps to improve cholesterol levels. Yowza, that’s a power packed disease kicking wonder right there!

Next on our list,..

Black Tea

Having the highest caffeine content of the tea family, the leaves of this tea are fermented instead of steamed like Mr. Green up there. If you’re a chai tea lover say, “Hey!” Well, behind every good chai is black tea at its base. Black tea can help protect those lungs (even those subjected to cigarette smoke damage), and it can also help reduce the risk of stroke.

White Tea

This tea is both uncured and unfermented and one study has shown that it could potentially have the most potent anticancer properties.

Oolong Tea

The antioxidants in this tea helped lower the “bad” kind of cholesterol when done in an animal study. There is one variety of oolong called, Wuyi, and even though science hasn’t backed the claims, it is heavily marketed as a weight loss supplement.

Pu-erh Tea

I literally have never heard of this tea, but it’s considered a black tea. The leaves of this tea are fermented, aged, and pressed into cakes. Again, an animal study done showed reduced weight loss and lower LDL cholesterol.

From here, we have a long list of herbal teas, which are made from roots, herbs, and fruits, steeped in hot water. Herbal teas have lower concentration of antioxidants, but still good benefits, nonetheless. Just to name a few herbal teas we are familiar with, we have: chamomile, hibiscus, rooibos, and echinacea. I’m not going to go into all of these, but you get the idea–TEA IS AMAZING and AMAZINGLY GOOD FOR YOU! It’s calorie-free, and power-packed with nothing but good body benefits. Now, don’t be adding Sweet N’ Low, Splenda, Equal to your tea. Your basically counteracting yourself. Think this way: Pink, Blue, Yellow-you’re a dead fellow! You’re better off doing the real thing: Sugar, real sugar. Heard of it? Yeah, do that (a small little bit, of course). Calories over Chemicals. You’re body can burn off what’s real, but chemicals are a different story. Do yourself a favor–don’t go there. However, my favorite thing is to get the packets of PureVia which is made from the Stevia plant. It’s a sweetener of the earth. You can get it at your local grocery store. I like to put a few packets in my purse so that I can sweeten my tea when I’m out and know I didn’t have to compromise my health.

I hope you like this post. I hope it was informative. I like knowing that I can drink other things besides water and be getting really good benefits and I’m sure you do, too. Whether your cup of choice, is hot, cold, or you like both, drink up friends…you’re on the right track!

Fun fact – you can actually decaffeinate tea yourself! My mom is a huge tea drinker, and she found out a few years ago that about 80% of the caffeine comes out in the first 30 seconds of brewing. So if you let it brew for 30 seconds, dump it out and start over you’ll have gotten rid of most of the caffeine.